Biohazard

Shortly after Lebedinsky returned to Moscow, Castro accused America of attacking Cuba with biological agents. A public outcry ensued, but evidence was unpersuasive. Lebedinsky was asked by the KGB to keep his work to himself. This was not the first time Castro had made such a claim; nor was it the last. Cuba has accused the United States twelve times since 1962 of staging biological attacks on Cuban soil with antilivestock and anticrop agents. The latest claim, filed with the United Nations in 1997, was the first ever submitted to the United Nations under Article 5 of the Biological Weapons Convention. It accused the United States of disseminating Thrips palmi, a plant-destroying insect, with crop spraying planes. The United States countered that the planes were ferrying ordinary pesticides to coffee plantations in Colombia. Kalinin was invited to Cuba in 1990 to discuss the creation of a new biotechnology plant ostensibly devoted to single-cell protein. He returned convinced that Cuba had an active biological weapons program.

The situation in Cuba illustrates the slippery interrelation between Soviet support of scientific programs among our allies and their ability to develop biological weapons. We spent decades building institutes and training scientists in India, Iraq, and Iran. For many years, the Soviet Union organized courses in genetic engineering and molecular biology for scientists from Eastern Europe, Cuba, Libya, India, Iran, and Iraq, among others. Some forty foreign scientists were trained annually. Many of them now head biotechnology programs in their own countries. Some have recruited the services of their former classmates.

In July 1995, Russia opened negotiations with Iraq for the sale of large industrial fermentation vessels and related equipment. The model was one we had used to develop and manufacture bacterial biological weapons. Like Cuba, the Iraquis maintained the vessels were intended to grow single-cell protein for cattle feed. What made the deal particularly suspicious was an additional request for exhaust filtration equipment capable of achieving 99.99 percent air purity — a level we used only in our weapons labs.

Negotiations were called off by the time reports of the deal surfaced in the Western press, but a United Nations employee told me Iraq obtained the equipment it needed elsewhere. United Nations Special Commission inspection teams, established after the Gulf War to monitor the dismantlement of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons program, had not been able to find this equipment by the time they were ejected from Iraq in late 1998. Many similar deals have gone ahead undetected.

One of the Russian officials involved in negotiations with Iraq was Vilen Matveyev, formerly of the Fifteenth Directorate and later a senior deputy at Biopreparat. Matveyev specialized in developing weapons-manufacturing equipment. He is still working as a technical adviser to the Russian government.

In 1997 Russia was reported to be negotiating a lucrative deal with Iran tor the sale of cultivation equipment including fermenters, reactors, and air purifying machinery. The equipment was similar to that which was offered to Iraq.

I have tried in this book to show how the Soviet Union developed a sophisticated biological warfare program and hid it from the world, but the extent of our achievement shouldn't lead anyone to assume that biological warfare is beyond the grasp of poorer nations.

In 1989, I visited New Delhi with a large Soviet delegation to conclude an agreement on the exchange of pharmaceutical equipment. The atmosphere had been cordial on both sides, reflecting the deepening alliance between Mikhail Gorbachev and India's leader, Rajiv Gandhi. Scientific exchanges with India were not uncommon. As early as the 1960s, Lev Telegin, who later became First Deputy Minister of Medical Industry, oversaw a project to build a huge production plant for vaccines and antibiotics four hours by car outside of Ahmadabad. The Soviet Union had been supporting India both militarily and scientifically ever since.

Negotiations took place at the State Department of Biotechnology, an agency responsible for coordinating the research and production of vaccines, not far from the main government complex. One of the two administrators was a military officer who came to Vector on an official visit the following year. Heavily armed soldiers were stationed inside the facility. As we were shown through the building, I noticed several sections were closed off with coded locks.